


The Last Fair Deal Gone Down

by elvisqueso



Category: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z
Genre: Family Feels, Fluff, Food for the soul, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Saiyan Culture, Slow Burn, memory regained
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 17:38:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21149600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvisqueso/pseuds/elvisqueso
Summary: A new head injury ends up restoring Goku's lost memories, and he struggles terribly with the results.





	The Last Fair Deal Gone Down

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat influenced by the music of Robert Johnson. The work title is borrowed from the Robert Johnson song of the same name; please take a listen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMZZe0YdArc).
> 
> Chapter 1 is titled for the Robert Johnson song of the same name; take a listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgXA-dEfnN8).
> 
> Beta'd by [Sevargs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevargs/pseuds/Sevargs) \- thank you so much, once again!
> 
> This is gonna be a slow update and a slow burn, but I hope it'll be worth it to you and to me.
> 
> Enjoy!

It wasn’t yet morning when Goku set out into the wood to catch a hog or a ‘saur for breakfast. Chi-Chi had eggs and milk, and more than enough vegetables to make any endless kind of skillet imaginable. She had a way with eggs, could always scramble them soft and just runny enough that they don’t dry out the tongue. She’d smother them in sauce and cheese – any proper kind she could make for the season or the day – and fresh squeeze grapefruit juice by hand quick as anything.

She was a beast like that, from hand-squeezing juice alone. A grip and an arm that could chuck a grown man a full mile if she put her mind to it, and she had once or twice since he’d known her. Even now, he had to respect her in that; she didn’t chuck him but there were days he wondered if she wasn’t just near mad enough to try. He wouldn’t fight it, but it wouldn’t feel too good, he thought.

Sun wasn’t quite peeking through the tree-line yet, but fading moonshine gave the sky a dusty shade and Goku caught sight of a big, wild boar between the trees. He thanked his luck and got downwind quick; it had been a while, but he felt he was finally back in the swing of hunting again.

Seven years or more out left him a little out of practice when he’d finally gotten back to it, and he kept letting prey slip on him or kept charring the carcass to cinder from too much heat in his shot. He had to settle for store-bought meat for a long while, sulking when he came home empty-handed as Chi-Chi sucked her teeth at him, saying he shouldn’t get so down about it. Like riding a bike, she’d said, he’d find a way to get back on and it’d be like he’d never gotten off. ‘Til then he’d have to get humble and eat that store-bought because she’d spent all day cookin’ it and she wasn’t about to let a bit of it go to waste, pouting Pa or no.

Now he was back into it, smooth as silk, and as soon as he got his chance he shot out and snapped the boar’s neck clean as fresh laundry. He hoisted it up on his shoulder with a grin and flew it right back home to be skinned and butchered. He liked doing that even more than farming, he thought, because it felt so immediate to hunt and skin.

It was active, a daily kind of work that meant result every day rather than tilling and planting for one actual harvest a year. Goten had been helping in the field, though, and that was time Goku wouldn’t trade away for anything. He’d missed the boy’s whole life, and he wasn’t going to miss any more if he could help it.

Chi-Chi was well on into her cooking – cracking about four-dozen eggs and chopping up uncountable peppers and onions and tomatoes – when he brought in the bacon-cuts. The rest he’d hung in the basement cellar to keep for lunch, and he’d hunt again for dinner. Probably fish, he thought, because the day smelled like it’d be a cloudy and warm one: perfect for fishing.

“Y’think Gohan’d be able to come fishing after class today?” He asked. Chi-Chi glanced over her shoulder at him.

“I sure don’t know, Goku. Midterms are comin’ up an’ he might be needin’ to study.”

“If he needs a break, then, I’ll get ‘im to come. Like that lady once time said? Gotta take some time outside ‘tween studyin’ so’s the lessons stick better.”

If he phrased a thing to help either of the boys’ studies, he knew he could get her approval and backing on it. It could be hard to get Gohan to go out into the woods nowadays without her backup. Was a ‘teenage rebellion’ thing, Bulma’d told him once. He was too good a kid to get into real trouble, but he’d get resistant about family things. Chi-Chi said he was just bein’ real focused on school since he was applyin’ to colleges now and had his heart set on Satan University – the biggest and best school, he’d said, for what he wanted to study. Chi-Chi thought it was because Videl would be going there, since her father was the school’s biggest sponsor and she’d get a free ride for it.

Chi-Chi gave him a nod and he knew he could count on her to help him get Gohan out of the house with him for an hour. He thought the boy needed it, with how pale he could look sometimes. Even when working by an open window, he was so shut-up with the books he was getting a pallor.

“Mornin’,” Goten’s sleepy voice came up from the kitchen doorway. He still had a blanket wrapped around him, and he suckled on his thumb-tip still while shuffling up to the table.

“Good mornin’, sugar-pie,” Chi-Chi said, now working on the hand-press with half a lemon. “You sleep good?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Gohan still asleep?”

“Yuh,” Goten pouted around his thumb, “I even jumped up ‘n down on ‘im an’ he wouldn’ git up. He jus’ shoo’d me off.”

“I think I know a way t’get your brother up.” Goku winked at Goten. He knew ways to get even a tired teen out of bed, now. He’d been on the receiving end of these methods himself, after all. Goten glowed up and hopped down to follow him to Gohan’s room, forgetting how sleepy he’d been.

Gohan’s room was still dark, with the curtains pulled down and Gohan buried beneath all his pillows, snoring like a bullhorn. Goku flicked on the lights and pulled up the curtains, flooding the room with light. Gohan groaned and curled in further. Phase one: complete. Now, some parents, he’d learned, would simply pull the sheets off to wake their kids. From personal experience, Goku knew if you really wanted results, you gotta take it one step farther.

“On the count of three—” Goku slid his hands under the bedframe, just opposite the side facing the window. Goten put his three fingers up to count.

“One…twooo…three—!” And with a quick lift, the bed up-ended, and Gohan went tumbling to the floor, yelping and hollering all the way. He was wide-eyed awake now, whether he liked it or not, scrambling to his feet.

“Up an’ at ’em, son! Breakfast’s almost ready; come down n’ set the table, now.”

Goten was now gleefully bouncing on the bed, now right-sided and clear of pillows and blankets along with his brother. “Yuh-huh! Yuh-huh! Get them lazy-bones up an’ at ’em, Gohan!”

“Why do you gotta be so _loud_?” Gohan griped, “An’ don’t be jumpin’ on my bed like that! You’re gonna break it!”

“Am not!”

“Am too!”

“Am not!”

“Am too!”

“No’m not! Daddy, Gohan’s accusin’ me o’ slander!”

“That’s not what that means!”

“Y’all quit bickering and get on down to the kitchen and help. It’s too early to be getting’ at each other like that, and your mom wouldn’t like it.”

That brought both boys back down enough to hug out a truce and head downstairs. Goku tossed the displaced bed-clothes back onto the bed and gave one good look out the window before following after his kids. It was gonna be a good day, he thought.

“You need me where?” Goku squinted at the phone, like he could hear Bulma better through it if he did.

“Ugh, do you listen?” Bulma’s voice crackled through the phone-speaker, too loud for the little amp inside to properly equalize, “I need you to come test-run this new ship – just a quick tour around the solar system probably. Please? It’s got a gravity deck and I just need to make sure the thing is, y’know, Saiyan-proof.”

Goku wasn’t sure he liked the way that last part sounded, but his interest piqued at the part about a gravity deck and Vegeta. “How long is this gonna take, though? I mean, I’d love to leave to train, but farming is a lot of work.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’ll take a couple days at most. Like I said, I’m just making sure it doesn’t fall apart or anything under normal conditions. You and Vegeta are hardy enough to withstand anything major, should something go wrong. And if something goes _really_ wrong, you could instant transmission the both of you out of there like that—” she snapped her fingers right next to the receiver, which just made it kind of pop, “—and it’s no biggie! Well? Whadda ya’ say?”

Goku hummed; he wasn’t sure he could afford a few days, even the few Bulma promised it would be. He had the crops to worry about. And Chi-Chi…

But then, when was he going to get a chance to really train with Vegeta? They’d been dancing around each other ever since Majin Buu, and Goku was getting restless knowing there was such an amazing fighter on Earth and he hadn’t been sparring with him at least. In part, he knew it was because he was busy and that Vegeta was still mad at him for holding out in their last match, if only a little bit. What better way to make it up to him than by training in space with the guy?

He’d have a talk with Chi-Chi. He’d figure it out.

“Okay,” Goku finally answered, already feeling the excitement bubbling up in his chest, “lemme jus’ get things square with the farm and I’ll come.”

Bulma squealed on the other end of the phone, making Goku wince, “Oh, thank you! I’m so happy you’re doing this; you don’t even _know!_” She chattered more a little bit like she was talking to someone else on her end and Goku just waited until he could hear something he understood. “Okay, let me know when you can launch. Capsule 6 is ready to go whenever! And Vegeta _will _be, too, despite whatever else he has going on.”

They said their goodbyes and Goku hung up pondering what he was gonna do about the farm for what could be a few days, but – knowing himself fairly well – could be a week. He was still pondering when he got to his door.

It was lunch-time, and the smell of seasoned boar filled the house along with what could be grilled pineapples and honey. There was already a spring salad on the table with sweet tea waiting to be et. Chi-Chi was slicing the boar up thin, chipping it and making tall sandwiches on homemade rye from the nearest neighbors’ house.

“There you are, Goku,” she said, “Put this on the table for me?”

“Sure thing.” He balanced the plate of ‘wiches carefully and walked them slowly over to the table. “Say, Bulma just called me on that phone-thing she got me.”

“Oh? What’d she call about?”

“She has some ship she wants testin’ on, and she asked if I was up for’t.”

“A ship?”

“Yuh-huh. For flyin’ in space with.”

“You wanna go?”

“Vegeta’s goin’.”

She sucked her teeth at him. “Well, you got a farm to tend to, Goku. An’ you cain’t jus’ be runnin’ off into space like that with no one lookin’ after the field. I cain’t do it, an’ the boys ain’t gonna do’t on account of their schoolin’ bein’ top priority right now.”

Goku winced a little more with each argument Chi-Chi made; he knew all of this already, but it drove home how self-indulgent going into space would be when he had to hear it all aloud like that. “I know that, Chi-Chi.” He pulled a sheepish look on her, and even with her back to him she knew what kind of face that was. “But, gosh, I haven’t had a chance to really sort things out with Vegeta. I was thinkin’: if we could hash it all out proper-like, man to man, it’d sure make me feel a lot better about what all happened during the tournament. You know?”

Chi-Chi paused in her clearing up the kitchen counter a moment. That way he could tell she was really giving it a think, and he relaxed a little. He might get to go yet.

“If you can figure a way to manage the farm while you’re gone,” she said, slowly and seriously, “then I won’t say boo if you go. But you listen here, Goku Son—” she whipped around, shaking a kitchen rag at him, “—You come back in once piece, you don’t lollygag, and you don’t bring back some monster’s gonna disrupt the boys’ studyin’. I expec’ you t’go out and come home like a good man should, an’ not havin’ me worryin’ where y’are or what’s come of you. We clear?”

“Yeas’m!” Goku beamed and gave her a snug hug, “Thank’s, Chi-Chi!”

“You still gotta make arran’ments for the farm! You ain’t gotta thank me yet!”

“I know I’ll figure somethin’ up.”

“We’ll see, now.”

He just grinned back at her and gave her one more squeeze before bounding off to wash up for lunch, his mind already spinning with daydreams: visions of trading blows while surrounded by starshine.

The ship Bulma designed was huge. She said it was ‘handysized:’ comparable to Capsule Corp.’s smaller airfraighters. And, like all of her company’s products, its design was comprised of spherical shapes, smooth curves sometimes with functional parts jutting out in mad directions. It was impressive, to say the least. And ultimately, she said, she’d like to have a fully functional transport for scientific expeditions.

She’d had a taste of space tech and now she wanted more, having grabbed up as many blueprints, scraps, and chips she could find from old wreckage and adventures. She was ready to test her own interstellar vehicle out.

She’d been having a smoke out in the launch bay, still pacing and tapping at small, external things. Now and then, she’d lope some yards away and take in the vessel as a whole, it’s dome glinting in the sunlights while birds and other avian creatures circled the smooth top, unsure in their decisions to land on it.

Bulma had never learned to sense ki, to shoot beams from her hands or fly, but she had a keen sixth sense honed by a lifetime of exposure to beings that could. She knew Vegeta had entered the bay probably as soon as he’d arrived, and she knew because the hairs on the back of her neck always managed to prickle upwards when he did – theories abound about the human nervous system having a natural electric pulse, this incredibly sensitive kinesthetic sense we have of our own bodies and sometimes the bodies of others. She supposed it was some undercurrent of static she’d become attuned to, unique to him and able to prick her senses whenever he entered a room.

Or it was nothing. She was an engineer, not a biologist. Of course, she could ask Gohan about it – he was proving to be a natural in ecology and the natural sciences.

“Thought you were cutting back on that shit,” he said.

“I am.” Bulma took a long drag on her cigarette and tapped the ashes off onto the ground. “Come to take a look at her? Pretty great, if I do say so myself. And I _do_.”

She turned to watch him come over to her, his eyes flicking over the ship. He’d seen it in various stages of construction – she’d conscripted him occasionally to handle the heavy machinery and parts while her bots bolted and welded them in place. Being a veteran of space travel, she valued his opinion highly and while he was, by his own admission, behind her in terms of the mechanical detail – the way these things really worked – he knew enough of the general principles to say “Yes, this could work,” or “No, this will backfire.”

She knew he could follow her jargon far enough along to know the broad design of what she’d meant. It was something she’d appreciated about him early on, and sometimes she felt spoiled by his presence – the having of someone who could follow, when the other 99.99% of the world would be tripping up on every other word out of her mouth.

He _had_ come to take a look, and she watched him looking as he inspected the outside in much the same way she’d been doing a moment before. Again, that scientific inclination of hers – it piqued at inconvenient times and often upon things she had little real expertise in. She found herself noting in some secret mental file in her brain labeled ‘Saiyan behavioral sciences’ and sublabeled ‘Vegeta’ the various physical reactions he made: the particular snap of his attention onto any given object of interest. He had a way of hooking his fingers around things all at once, sometimes to bring it quickly to his nose and away again. She’d sometimes catch his back muscles seizing, like a shudder with no chill, before he would turn and check for something behind him.

“Seems alright. It’s big,” he said. Bulma had the hatch open so they could walk up inside. “I don’t know how you expect me to man this on my own, though.”

“You won’t be; Goku’s going, too.”

“What?” The corridor they were in had been decorated like the passageways in Capsule Corps’ tech and development labs: with smooth lines and cool colors. The occasional window into a common room. Bulma licked her thumb to smear away a dust-spot on one of them.

“I said: Goku’s going, too. Whatever happened to that superior alien hearing of yours?”

“I can hear just fine. What you said was ludicrous.”

“Why? He’s piloted a space pod before and did fine on his own.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Oh no?”

Vegeta halted himself from snapping back by clicking his jaw shut and scowling at some corner off to the side. He was being unreasonable, he knew. _Feeling _unreasonable. It was a hard feeling to shake once he got into it, and if he had a mind to, he could be deeply unreasonable for record-breaking lengths of time. Bulma just brushed past him towards the next door.

“I’d say the ship’s about space-ready. You better make sure you’re packed and ready for when Goku gets here – whenever that is.”

“So, we’re waiting on Kakarot. Again.”

“I got him on short notice, and he needs to make arrangements for the farm apparently.”

They’d strolled back out into the bay, and Trunks was there, distractedly playing with some handheld game. He perked up when he saw them step down and waved. Bulma waved back.

“Hey, little man. What do you think of the ship?”

“It’s cool! Hey, papa, you’re going up in that thing?”

“Only because your mother said to.”

“Aw, I wish I was going.”

Bulma ruffled Trunks’s hair, “Not this time, champ. But once the test runs are done, you can. I’ll even let you pick the music if you’re good.”

“Sick!”

Vegeta rolled his eyes back to the ship, priorities of thought far and away from whatever the damn trip soundrack should be. Flying around space with Kakarot, if even for a few days, would force him to confront whatever still lingered between them following their last battle, and he wasn’t feeling ready to do so. Despite assurances that with a few rounds and some time, all would be considered fine and done with, he couldn’t help the nagging sense of repulsion at the sappiness of it all. Just because he’d accepted his affections, doesn’t mean he had to like it.

He turned and, with a pat to Trunks’s head, went up to his rooms to pack.

They were in the garden when a distinctive little pop and hum announced Kakarot’s arrival, weighed down as he was by two duffel bags and some kind of lunch carrier — Chi-Chi must have gotten to him before he could leave, Vegeta guessed, for if the clown’d gotten his own way, he’d have run off with just the clothes on his back and not a care in the world about tomorrow. Regardless, he had a grin on his face spread ear-to-ear as Bulma jumped up to greet him.

“Hey, Goku! Looks like you’re ready to go.”

“Yehp! Chi-Chi cert’nly made sure I was fit to fly.” He shrugged with the duffels, a sheepish chuckle slipping past his lips. “Cooked enough for the two of us, even. Leave it to Chi-Chi to dote long-distance.”

Vegeta reached over and snagged one of the duffels from Kakarot’s shoulder. “What did she put in these things?” He asked, smally impressed at the weight of the thing.

“This ‘n that. I got them weighted clothes for trainin’ with, an’ Chi-Chi musta been sure I’d be needin’ spares.”

“Good thing she was thinking ahead,” Bulma said. “Come on to the launch bay; I’ll get you all prepped for take-off.”

Bulma had a route planned out for them— one that zipped a turn around two neighboring solar clusters of differing gravitational pulls to test the ship’s constitution. As she rambled on about specs and ship functions, area tests and atmospheric settings, Vegeta and Goku followed behind.

Goku ran around the ship like a kid in a carnival, at first, asking a million questions about what that part of the ship was for and what button did what and where the mess hall and dorms and gravity room were. Bulma hushed him not a few times, sharply reminding him that he’d get to try everything in due time, and that he could always ask Vegeta if he forgot because Vegeta already got the run-down on how everything worked.

Goku sidled up to Vegeta while Bulma was detailing how to work the maintinence system.

“Bulma sure went all out, huh?”

Vegeta smirked, of all things. “She’s determined to prove herself. I think knowing there’re more technologically advanced species out there has her a little fired up.”

“How long’s she been workin’ on this?”

“She’s been tinkering with improving the space pods for years now. She has her fingers in a lot of pies, if you get my meaning.”

Goku grinned. “Though that turn of phrase _has _got me hankerin’ for a nice slice o’ pie.”

“Of course it does.” Vegeta snorted.

Bulma brought them to the bridge and activated the ship computer, which pinged and greeted them in an even, automated voice.

“Okay, boys, check this out: this is AIBOU – Artificial Intelligence: Bridge Operations Unit. It’s what takes care of all the usual ship’s functions and autonavigation systems. If anything needs a manual override, just order the computer to switch over and a prompt will come up – Vegeta already knows how to use that part of everything.”

Goku whistled in awe.

“I know, right?” Bulma preened over her console, almost giggling to herself, “I gotta say, I’ve really outdone myself on this one.”

“If there’s nothing else—” Vegeta scoffed and made a ‘move-it’ gesture with his thumb. Bulma just snorted in kind and waved him off.

“All of a sudden _you’re _in a hurry. Relax, and let me get the launch pad ready. You boys get strapped in; it’s gonna be a little rocky until you breach the outer-atmosphere.”

She kissed Vegeta’s grumpy cheek, hugged Goku, and loped out towards the ship’s exit ramp. Once she was out, Vegeta ordered the ship to close up and run launch sequences.

“Strap in, Kakarot.” Vegeta smacked the seat of one of the pilot chairs, and sat in the one next to it. Goku watched after him, trying to pay attention to the way he got all his belts fastened. Vegeta snapped at him to get on with it when he spent too long watching and hadn’t gotten himself secured yet.

Bulma began the countdown, and off and upwards they went, hurtling into space.

In such a big ship, Goku found it hard to reconcile the sense of space with the knowledge of confinement. It seemed he was constantly looking for a window to look out of, just to keep the sense of where he was solid in his own mind. Vegeta, if he felt the same way, didn’t show it.

He was looking out from the bridge into an asteroid cluster driting around a dwarf planet, catching glistening shimmers of frozen hydrogen on their surfaces. Space was a weird and wonderful place when he stopped to really look at it, he reckoned. He didn’t plan on trying to understand all the things that made the Universe what it was, though. He was happy just admiring.

Vegeta came in, a towel folded neatly over his shoulder and a bottle of water in his hand, and sat some feet away. He said nothing, but he was certainly making sure Goku knew he was sitting there with him.

And then Goku was hit with the sudden anxiety of having an opportunity to _talk_. It posed a problem: should he just bring up anything on his mind now and let the conversation guide itself to an eventual resolution – of which, even Goku wasn’t quite sure he knew – or should he wait until they’d spent a day out already, and hope for another opportunity to arise? Well, it sure was a pickle.

Turned out, he didn’t have to try and make anything happen himself because Vegeta called his attention first.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I won’t be half-assing it in that gravity room. Bulma gave it a top-end of 700 Gs, which isn’t bad.”

“You don’t worry we might crash right through the bottom of the ship that way?”

“Only one way to find out.”

As it turned out, the floor of the gravity room held up just fine, even with the two men hurling each other into it. Bulma, being a genius, had reinforced the structure with an incredibly durable and elastic kind of padding which both softened their inevitable crashing and protected the body of the ship from their sparing. So, gleefully, the two bashed eachother black and blue until the ship computer notified them that they’d been running the gravity room for 5 hours and Goku’s stomach notified them that lunch was probably a good idea.

“Kakarot.” Vegeta’s voice yanked Goku’s attention from the box-lunch he’d been scarfing down. Mouth full, he blinked in askance. Vegeta seemed to hesitate for a beat, then said: “How’s Goten doing?”

“Mmh!” Goku perked up and swallowed, brushing rice grains from his cheek, “Real good! Been helpin’ me out in the fields. He sure is smart— not the same kinda smart as Gohan. Goten’s got a good sense about _people_, y’see.”

Vegeta nodded along. “That kid’s more savvy than he lets on, that’s for sure.” Goku didn’t say anything— just grinned conspiratorally. Vegeta snorted and clenched his jaw. “Whatever,” he said, “it’s none of my business anyway.”

“Sure it is, Vegeta.”

“I don’t even know why I asked.”

“You know, he talks about you a lot.”

“_What._”

“Yeap. When I firs’ come back, he made a mission outta tellin’ me everythin’ about everyone and all he’d done in his sev’n-year-old life, and you were a big topic.” Vegeta just glared furiously at his plate while his face went beet-red.

“Ugh. Ankle-biters. Just never would leave me alone.” He bit out.

“You’re bad luck y’got a natural talent with them kids.”

“You know, it’s this kind of shit that had me accepting Babidi’s offer, right?”

Goku shrugged. Sure it was, but he was past that now; Goku was certain enough of that. “That may be. ‘S also what got you gettin’ all self-sacrificial, Vegeta.”

Vegeta groaned into his palms. “_Don’t _remind me.”

“It’s alright now, you came back after-all.”

All he got in response was a huff and a glare. Somehow, that was satisfying enough of a response.

They didn’t talk again until the next day, while Vegeta was checking the auto-navigation display in the bridge.

“Well, we’re making good time, I guess,” he grumbled, more to himself than to Goku, who was staring at the same screen and tilting his head this way and that, his eyes working to make sense of the charts.

“So, we’re goin’ through this here system all today’n zippin’ back through that system all tomorrow, right?” He asked, pointing along the supposed pathway on the chart-display over Vegeta’s shoulder.

“More or less,” Vegeta shrugged, “if nothing goes wrong.” He noticed that Kakarot was hovering close enough that he could feel body heat on his shoulder and shifted his weight to his other foot. “Not that anything _should_…”

“You worried about somethin’ Vegeta?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

Goku didn’t press, just let his eyes drift over the other on-screen displays: the engine command, the fuel guage, velocity, atmosphere and general gravity controls. There was a time-keeper set to West City time. He huffed a little in surprise: it was only just after noon, making it fairly early in the morning on Pan Fry. He always expected it to be late in the night back home. He pondred why that was; maybe it was, again, that his mind still had to catch up to seeing so much dark and starlight outside the windows. Goten would be seeking out Piccolo about now to get at that irrigation ditch he’d been digging, he thought.

A sharp kind of snort from Vegeta redirected his attention to the display.

“Somethin’ to worry about?”

“Shut up. No.”

“Well?” Goku leaned in again, hovering over his shoulder to peer at the stellar map on the screen.

“Just Bulma. She wasn’t kidding about testing the limits on this thing.”

“How you figure?”

“See that?” He reached over and tapped the screen, zooming in on a cluster of dots with a yellow hatch-pattern over it. “That’s a dense radiation mass in between two giant stars. I guess if you want to test the resilience of a ship’s shield generators, I guess sending it through _that_ is one way to do it.”

Goku peered closer at the cluster of dots, nose almost touching the screen. Everything on it seemed to be packed together real right, even zoomed in as much as it was. “Is AIBOU gonna be able to make it through all that? Should we be rarin’ for switchin’ it to manual aroun’ that kinda soup?”

Vegeta made a growling kind of hum as he stared down the screen. “Maybe,” he said. Spinning on his heel, he brushed past Goku on his way off the bridge. “I’m going to the gravity room. Don’t join me for a while.” And he was gone.

It was after dinner when Goku figured it was safe to join Vegeta in the gravity room again. He brought along a small dinner from the mess hall, intending to pester Vegeta until he ate. Weren’t good to be skipping meals while training, and whatever worrying Vegeta was doing about that last bend in their trip was probably setting his stomach to turning all about. Best to get him to shove _something _down his gullet, in any case.

“Yo, Vegeta,” Goku grinned, adjusting as he entered under the heightened gravity. Vegeta paused in his crunches, hands bracing against the floor as he relaxed his abs.

“What’s that?”

“Dinner.” Vegeta made a face like he’d just caught wind of something awful.

“Ugh, you’re _doting_.”

“I learn’t from the best.”

“I’m not hungry. And if I eat _now _I’ll get a cramp or something.”

“You take me for a dummy? Ain’t ever been a Saiyan alive what got cramps from eatin’ a’fore fightin’.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I got a hunch about’t.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes, huffed and puffed a little for good measure, and ordered the gravity back to 10. They sat there on the floor, Goku picking morsels off and catching dirty looks from Vegeta for it.

“We’ll be passing through that troublesome system soon.” Vegeta remarked, off-handedly.

“You wanna go up to the bridge and keep an eye on’t?”

“No,” Vegeta grimaced, “I don’t wanna know how we get through that mess. I’m leaving it to Bulma’s AIBOU to work it out. If the unit’s as impressive as she boasts— and it _should _be; this is Bulma, after all— we’ll get through it regardless.”

“Outta sight, outta mind, huh, Vegeta?” Goku was getting a record-breaking number of dirty looks today.

“Shut up and get up – we’re sparring.”

Goku grinned.

They’d been sparring late, by West City time. Neither one wanted to be the one to call a rest, and neither one would admit to being even close to tired. It was another stand-off: each man on the ground, sweaty and bruised, their eyes locked and taunting the other to make the first move. All of a sudden, the ship lurched violently enough to knock them both around.

“What the _hell_—” Vegeta was cut off by an alarm system blaring with repeated directives from AIBOU to “_please proceed to the bridge for procedural analysis_.”

With a complex series of blueprints and technical imagery over the bridge display system, AIBOU announced that a radiation flare had overloaded the power breaker. Someone needed to go down to the engine room and change the resistors over and possibly realign the refractors.

Goku rolled his sleeves up and volunteered. He loved working with his hands, and the opportunity to do so on board the ship was one he wouldn’t pass up. Vegeta grudgingly allowed it after promises that _yes_, he could handle it, and _no_, he won’t do no slap-dash kinda job of it and wash his hands of it. When it came to building and fixin’ thing, Goku was a careful man. He had his pride, too, when it came to it.

As Vegeta monitored things from the bridge, following the instructions laid out by the computer, Goku put some work gloves on and went to task.

He was in the engine-block, carefully as could be aligning the refraction rods around the main power coil. Tongue out, he balanced himself against the coil base and a structure column. Vegeta checked in over the intercom:

“Status?”

“Got jus’ this last one to align and we’re good as gold, Vegeta.”

“Good. Finish up and get up to the bridge when you can: I want to check in with Bulma about this and I want you there to report.” His tone was clipped and precise, and Goku guessed this was an old habit from his soldiering days.

“Yes, sir,” he even threw in a salute for good measure, even though Vegeta wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Tch,” was all he got back.

Just that moment, there was a bang and another lurch— this time much more violent, as some space debris glanced off the ship’s outer repulsion field. The thing had been big enough to knock the ship, and, before he knew it, Goku had braced his hand against the main power coil in front of him and had a sudden and huge jolt through his system. Had he been any lesser of a being, it might have killed him.

Vegeta was down in the engine room in a flash, pulling Goku up from where he’d gone and cracked his skull on the floor.

“Kakarot! How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Um…” Goku’s vision swam and his skin was tingling. His muscles were jolting, trying to work out what to do with the shock still shuddering through them. He tried to focus on the hand in his face. “Five?”

“I was holding up three. Come on, you probably have a concussion.”

“Allllrigh’.” Goku felt like his mouth was full of cotton, but he didn’t fight Vegeta when he hoisted him up over his shoulder.

“Don’t fall asleep, Kakarot.”

“I won’.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I sure don’ rightly know. I jes’ ended up here.”

“Right.”

“Oooh, my belly sure don’ feel good, Vegeta...”

“Don’t fucking throw up on me.”

They were in the med bay of the ship before Goku could say anything else, and the med bots went right to work, scanning his head and working to remedy the knockaround he’d gotten. Vegeta saw the bots working to produce a vial of gelatinous fluid and apply it to Kakarot’s scalp.

“That gel is something Bulma’s been working on,” he remembered, “it’s a topical form of that synthetic DNA solution used in the Freiza Force’s healing pods.”

“How’ she come by that stuff?” Goku shivered as the gel was applied cold to his head. He couldn’t really imagine how it would help a concussion, but he wasn’t exactly a doctor, neither.

“She got ahold of a sample through some ‘contacts’ in the Patrol, apparently. She speculates that, in smaller, concentrated amounts, the gel would heal more efficiently and with less adverse side effects.”

“No kiddin’? Man, that Bulma sure is smart.” Already, Goku felt like he wasn’t spinning so much, and his vision sharpened a little. One of the bots ordered a day’s bedrest in a computerized voice. He’d probably only take half-a-day, with how good he feels now.

“Go take a nap, then,” Vegeta huffed as he turned on his heel to leave, “I’ll be in the gravity room.”

Goku watched him go.


End file.
